


There Is No Ithaca

by hes5thlazarus



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Arlathan (Dragon Age), Body Horror, Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, Gen, Horror, Mother-Son Relationship, Non-Consensual Body Modification, POV Solas (Dragon Age), Pre-Canon, Revolution, The Blight (Dragon Age), warning: Ghilan'nain
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:54:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29416707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hes5thlazarus/pseuds/hes5thlazarus
Summary: Solas wrecks his revolution on the altar of Mythal.
Relationships: Andruil & Solas, Andruil/Ghilan'nain, Fen'Harel/Ghilan'nain (Dragon Age), Ghilan'nain/Solas (Dragon Age), Mythal & Solas (Dragon Age), Solas & Wisdom (Dragon Age)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 16





	1. if one of us sinned it must be God

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a line from Odysseas Elytis, "if one of us sinned it must be God."

Humiliation comes easy to a son of Arlathan. Solas goes limp and lets the vallaslin take control, shuntling self deep behind his eyes where even Mythal cannot see. He knows he is not wrong. She bends his knee and he stares steadily at the ground. His eyes do not burn. His lips do not contort into a snarl. Mythal shapes him into genteel obedience, as a reminder of what they are. She forces him. He resists gently. The punishment will be worse than this. He would punish himself worse, if he let her see his eyes.   
  
“Even my own Pride kneels humbled before me,” Mythal chuckles. Hesitant laughter murmurs through the galley: he may be humbled today, but back at her side tomorrow. They all know this, especially him. He traces sigils in the mosaics, cold beneath his hands. They dance geometric before his eyes, and he wonders at the shapes into which they contort. He has dissected an elf’s eye before, assisting Ghilan’nain. What collection of minuscule muscular contortions make this? How can he replicate it? He tells himself: this is what I shall remember. Mythal’s grim smile and the uneven marble tesserae cutting into my minds, and I shall permutate the perspective until I can meet my own eyes again. He tests the charm quietly, tensing the muscles in his feet, but he cannot rise. Mythal still has him bound.   
  
Andruil says wearily, “Really, Mother, is this necessary? Let him rise, and lick his wounds, and come back all the brighter tomorrow. We have work to do.” She flourishes a hand, so the light catches in her lyrium-gauntlet. He sees the red reflected in her shadow. Reflexively he shudders but he cannot, Mythal has him in place, and the horror comes to his eyes and Solas quashes it fiercely, because though he is bound, he still has his own pride, and he will not let Mythal corrupt his nature. She made him like this. He will not let her break him too.   
  
Mythal is amused. “Fine,” she says. She has made her point: the war against the dwarves will continue, and those pressed into the Evanuris’ service will stay their servants. There may be freedom for their grandchildren, down the line: so Solas’ own children, if he has any, will be born free. But the soldiers are bound to Elvhenan, and Mythal will not free them so long as Elvhenan needs them--and that includes binding her own Pride to Elvhenan’s will, however humbling it may be.   
  
The vallaslin sinks back into his skin, almost invisible, and slowly he rises. Expressionless he gazes upon Mythal. He thinks, your Pride shall be your downfall.    
  
He says the words he has rehearsed so often before, “Hail Mythal, adjudicator and savior! She has struck down the pillars of the earth and rendered their demesne unto the People! Praise her name forever!"   
  
Mythal smiles unpleasantly. “Enough of that, Dread Wolf. I have mastered my Pride. I do not need to see you grovel.”   
  
“I merely recite fact,” Solas says. “Fact you have had me say many a time before, and that I will repeat for any audience.” There is no point in staying. She will not listen to reason. This lyrium-sickness will drive them mad and wrap their minds right into that bizarre hivemind of the Titans. The Evanuris will not compromise. His people have sealed the road to the Titan, and he has been punished for it. He has taken liberties that were never his, enslaved to the will of Mythal, to guard those she does not consider her children. He holds the anger in the pit of his stomach and keeps his face blank.   
  
Mythal says, “See that you do. You may leave, Dread Wolf. You have sinned but you have been forgiven. Return to celebrate the spoils of our next campaign. I will not see you before then.”   
  
Solas thinks,  _ I _ don’t want to see you before then, what makes you think I am so eager for punishment? I am not like Andruil, still slavering for a kind word. I have my own people to attend to--and yours. He cannot help but utter a short laugh as he bows his head. Smiling grimly to himself, he leaves, conscious of the court’s attention, and he cannot help but throw his shoulders back and walk as tall as he would after a battle bloodlessly won. His pride is smarting. He will lick his wounds, and recover.   
  
He walks back to his office and takes the eluvian back to his official household, where he removes the golden armor of Fen’Harel that he is really growing too old for, and changes to more comfortable clothes. He debates the utility of doing something dramatic with his hair, where gray is beginning to pepper at the temples. Restlessly he goes into his bedroom and packs a bag, thinking that he can go anywhere, slip away to another quarter of the city, where he can be yet another of the All-Mother’s slaves, and struggle to pay his rent and his tithe as he works a job marginally more satisfying than managing a losing war. He would like to paint. In another world, perhaps, he was never given that promotion, and returned to Arlathan not in Mythal’s own triumph, but as a weary footsoldier, seeking his allotment from the temple guards. He laughs. A slave’s life, regardless: he cannot imagine a reality in which he is not defined by the will that is Mythal.   
  
Then Wisdom says, “Look at yourself, Pride. You dressed yourself blindly. A costume can change but you remain the same.”   
  
He had not heard them creep behind him. He looks up at them and they smile, mirroring his face without the binding. Grief seizes him and he turns away, tears prickling at his eyes. He sits back on his bed and puts his head in his hands. Wisdom freely given can feel cruel. He thinks, I thought I had grown too old for this.   
  
“I envy you,” Solas says. “That you may take my shape without my obligations. That you are free from the will of Mythal. That your nature remains incorrupt.” He touches the vallaslin at his cheeks. He remembers fighting off the priests when they restrained him, as a boy. He remembers refusing to submit to the will that is Mythal. He bit one--his father had been horrified. They still branded him. He remembers the way that it burned.   
  
Wisdom is quiet. They sit next to them. He listens to them mimic his breathing. Outside the window the city seethes. Night is falling and there are plenty of places to go, a friend of his has a gallery opening tonight, and then there is the little cafe opened by a man from the Tirashan who sings exquisitely, and of course he has the dispatches to attend to, little favors to dispense, and his friends to consult about this latest humiliation.   
  
Wisdom says, “What makes you corrupt?”   
  
“The will of Mythal,” Solas says immediately, and then pauses. “The will  _ that is _ Mythal. Obeying and disobeying. Either way is wrong.” He smiles ruefully. “I have sinned and I have been forgiven and I will be welcomed back to the fold, only to sin and be forgiven and welcomed back to the fold once more. According to the will that is Mythal. Because her Pride must be mastered.”   
  
“What makes you obey?” they say.   
  
Solas says bitterly, “Habit and the vallaslin. Blood calls to blood.” Sick shame and anger rush him, and his fingers claw at the quit under them; and then he breathes through the pain, as he has been taught, and the feeling of humiliation subsides into rawness rather than burning.   
  
Wisdom says, “What makes you disobey?”   
  
Solas looks at them askance. “Because I will not blindly follow orders that will get myself and my people killed. I will not commit workers who expect me to protect them to those mines. I will not let the Evanuris’ greed destroy us all. The vallaslin may bind me, but it does not command me. I will save the elvhen people, even from their own false gods.”   
  
Wisdom smiles, and Solas looks into the face that is so like how his own could be, unmarred by the vallaslin. “Then you have it,” they say. “You know your path. Walk it. Mythal gave you manumission, even if she did not give you your will.”   
  
“I cannot remove the vallaslin,” he says, amused. Wisdom loses its definition slightly, so Solas knows they disagree, even if they will not vocalize it. “What?”   
  
“You say you cannot remove the vallaslin,” they say. “But you also say that it does not command you. Then why do you let it define your face? You are limiting yourself, Solas. Why?”   
  
Solas says, only to fill the space, “You have given me much to think about.” It is unthinkable that the vallaslin can be removed, but he wants it gone. He has rarely circumscribed his desires before--it was unthinkable that a slave could become an evanuris, after all, but that did not stop him from steadily rising through the ranks. He rises and catches sight of himself in the mirror in the corner of his room, plainly attired, Mythal’s vallaslin burnt as prominent on his face as ever. He strokes the lines they burnt onto his chin, wondering what he would look like without it. He imagines himself without it, no longer resigned to the easy humiliations of Mythal’s service, and he sees, in a glance, the possibility.   
  
A shiver traces down his spine as Wisdom leaves the room and he is left standing before the mirror, thinking rapidly the chain of spells born in the blood and how they can be undermined, chipped away at, worn away like a river against the stone. He has brought down mountains and decapitated the heart of the Stone. What is stopping him now? When there is possibility, there is pride. Solas raises his head and meets his own gaze in the mirror and knows, suddenly, that his only master is his Pride, and that cannot be mastered.


	2. there is a traitor within you whose time for punishment will come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Solas returns from war to find Ghilan’nain incubating the Blight within their own home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Psychological horror, body horror, abusive relationships. Remember the codex of Ghilan’nain’s ascension? The hunter blinds her, and Andruil revives her and makes her a god. This is the story behind the myth, or at least one version of it.

The shiver of her flesh as he steps into her arms and she pulls him down intoxicates him. They enjoy working together, and they enjoy lounging in her rooms afterward. Ghilan’nain is the First amongst the People, occupying a similar place of honor he had left, and she has enough political support from the Evanuris to step forward and become one of them. He likes the sharpness of her mind and the purity of her aesthete. Their partnership is useful to both of them, and he enjoys the side-benefits.   
  
Mythal has them marry, as a precursor to declaring her new title. Neither of them have any reason to object, and Fen’Harel loves her. He craves her on the field, returning to the barracks to mop the gore up. He can imagine her cool smile regarding him. She does like the smell of blood. Whose? His, perhaps: and the danger quickens his pulse. Solas well knows there are others. He has never claimed anyone’s full loyalty, and would not ask that of her. He does not want it. Ghilan’nain’s devotion is terrible, and he is glad to weaken her hold. He loves her, so he is happy to let her go.   
  
“So you tell yourself,” Felassan says. “Yet you haven’t been home twice since you’ve married. While Andruil has stayed there for the entirety of our last campaign.”   
  
Solas makes a face. “She leaves when I return, and that is all I ask. That we dispel the rumors that we are in any entwined. Ghilan’nain may do what she likes, as I may do what I like--as long as Andruil does not make my home hers.”   
  
“And people find it titillating,” Felassan says. “The idea your wife is fucking your half-sister.”   
  
“Now, that’s unconfirmed,” Solas says, amused. “That she is my half-sister. I know they are engaged in a  _ passionate _ affair, reaching heights equalling my own. The household attendants say they are not particularly discrete. But you know I have never confirmed who my mother may be.”   
  
“Because the uncertainty works better,” Felassan says. “Sure. So you say. But what will you do when you have to commit?”   
  
“No comment,” Solas says, and Felassan throws back his head and laughs.   
  
They have married and perhaps they have grown bored but they have used the marriage-gifts from Mythal to build a laboratory to study the vallaslin and undo its binding. Ghilan’nain is an expert at blood magic, he walks the Fade like none but Wisdom have, and with the two together they can feel the lease lessening. With him at war, she has the freedom to call for volunteers amongst her own people, and it keeps them both safer. They can pretend it is the other’s fault, they can pretend they never knew, if one is caught--and the work will continue, because the work must be done.   
  
The Pillars of the Earth have slowed their shaking since he closed the corrupted mine. The corruption seems to have stagnated within the Stone’s own children, and a dwarven general with whom he has occasion to parley tells him that for now, the poison seems to be isolated in that one lyrium vein Mythal had seized. Solas looks hopefully to the near future: peace is almost upon them. Quietly his aides have drawn up terms. Once they break the vallaslin, they will have enough popular support to force the Evanuris to convene, and he is determined they will have a treaty for the dwarves’ grandchildren, at the very least. He returns from war with a swagger in his step, and Felassan leaves him at the gate.   
  
“I find her eyes unsettling,” Felassan says, waving off the invitation to stay. “She’s constantly taking my measure and seeing where I’ll fit.”   
  
Solas laughs. “I quite like it.” He clasps him on his back. “She makes me--useful. But take care, my friend. If you shall not visit me, I shall visit you.” He turns and walks the monumental marble entrance, smiling at the magnificent halla he had carved to mark this as their place. He can feel Felassan watching his back as he goes, and appreciates his concern, though he himself does not deem it necessary. Nothing would dare strike the Dread Wolf within his own home. The household ranges in front of him--the staff that followed him from Arlathan, Ghilan’nain’s own aides, all paid. His wife stands at the center. She radiates an almost underwater heat, reminding him of the laboratory she created in the caldera of the Sundered Mountain, to the North. There is a tension in the air; he schools his posture to look unaffected. His lead attendant, Marella, looks at him pleadingly.   
  
Ghilan’nain steps forward. She wears a new diadem, inlaid with red stones that whisper like the Fade. He can almost hear it, the song sounds familiar, but he tears his eyes from her jewelry and meets her gaze steadily.   
  
“Yet another triumphant return,” she says. “The avenging hero comes home.”   
  
He takes her hand and kisses it. Her skin is cold. Arm-in-arm, they enter the hall, and their attendants fall in silently behind him. The whispers nudge at his mind. The stones must be Fade-touched, and she cannot hear it because of her blood magic. They do not bother him, but it is almost comprehensible, they want his attention, and it is hard to focus and see if she has made any changes in his absence because they hiss like shaken-up snakes. He can’t help but wonder how they were so stirred.   
  
She leads him to their baths, shedding attendants on their way. He had chosen this plot of land from Mythal’s munificence precisely for the natural sulphuric springs and proximity to the sea, and Ghilan’nain’s engineers have made good use of the hydrothermal energy. Finally, they are alone, and she turns to him and regards him coolly, those seaglass eyes measuring him, checking for any flick of the eye or uncertainty. Solas stares steadily back. She is smug about something, she cannot hide the slight smirk to her lips. He caresses her face and she smiles back up at him.   
  
Mythal’s vallaslin is as terrible on them as ever, but underneath the mark of their own fate is seething. She has done something, Solas realizes. She wants to celebrate it. He carefully lifts the diadem from her brow, careful to make sure the arms do not snag in her hair, and places it on the marble bench already waiting for them. The pool is before them, steaming gently.   
  
“You’ve done it,” he says, “haven’t you?”   
  
“In part,” she says. “Why don’t I show you?” She traces a hand up his chest and begins unstrapping him from his armor. When she has his breastplate off, leaving him in a relatively unremarkable silk shirt, he grabs her hands and kisses her. She tastes like smoke and lyrium, right into his veins, and he gasps as she strips him bare and takes him into the water. He has been a long time from the comforts of home. She pins him to the side of the pool, marble cool against his skin, and fucks him. In a less desperate mood, he would call it making love, but with Ghilan’nain it seems too quaint. And when she is satisfied with him, he sinks deeper in the water, tired but glowing, and closes his eyes as she traces the lines of his vallaslin.   
  
Her hand at the lines drawn onto his neck, Ghilan’nain speaks. “My exhausted soldier,” she says, amused, “always eager to perform in the line of duty, no matter how exhausted, how recent the battlefield, how tired from the road.”   
  
He wraps his arms around her and pulls her in tighter. Truthfully he wishes to rest, even fall asleep in the bath, and then retire to his offices and find out what has his staff so anxious. “I wouldn’t call it a duty,” he says. “Not nearly so rote as that.”    
  
Ghilan’nain tosses her hair back. “I should hope not.” She pushes herself up slightly in his lap, hands on his shoulders, and Solas rocks back. Her eyes glitter. “Now, my heart, where no one can see us, where all assume we are celebrating your return home.”   
  
“Yes, we do have a reputation to keep,” Solas says. He places his hands on her hips to keep her steady. Ghilan’nain arches her back, and he notices a slight bruise right at the edge of her right breast, and wonders if he left it. He resolves to leave a match on the left one: it is not jealousy, but he has always been competitive. He traces the edge of her breast like she likes, and she shivers. She genuinely shares this passion with him, he knows it. The alternative is too humiliating to bear.   
  
“The vallaslin,” she says. “Though it cost me thirty percent of my sample size, I’ve reverse-engineered the geass Mythal laid upon us. It’s not blood magic, not like we thought it was. She’s been using lyrium, my love. Lyrium and Fade-touched stormheart in the ink.” Solas leans back into the wall, and Ghilan’nain slips slightly in the water and wraps her legs around his waist. She searches his face.   
  
“How large was the sample?” Solas says repressively.   
  
She pulls back. “Large enough to get the results,” she says sharply. “You may read my report yourself.”   
  
“My heart,” he says, by way of an apology. Their limbs are entangled now, and Solas worries she will trip. Carefully he extricates himself and rises, dripping, from the pool. He towels himself off and turns back to Ghilan’nain, who watches him. Her face is unreadable. It mirrors his. Solas reaches for the clothes an embarrassed servant must have placed, while they were otherwise occupied, on the bench where Ghilan’nain had left her robes. A red tunic with gold embroidery about the collar, soft doeskin trousers, and a new wolfskin: Solas turns back to her, smiling.   
  
“These are lovely,” he says, fingering the embroidery. He can taste the sigils sewn into the shirt: to keep it from tearing, to wick away sweat, to keep it clean. He catches a particularly strong shielding spell, powerful enough to glance away a blade going for the neck. Ghilan’nain rises from the pool.   
  
“You never buy new clothes,” she says. “And what we are about to do will not make us popular at court. Try them. They’ll adjust to fit. I’ve been working the weave to adjust to your body heat.” She takes up the diadem and hands it to him expectantly. It sears his hands, and Solas drops it in surprise. It clatters to the floor. Ghilan’nain bends to pick it up, his eyes travel the length of her back, and she straightens, placing it back into her hand. He takes her hands. They are untouched.   
  
“Too sensitive,” she says, “Fadewalker.” She takes his face and kisses him. Her tongue is cold, her skin is cool, and he cannot summon back the fire he found in the pool. She has not answered how large the sample size was. She knows he disapproves.   
  
He breaks the kiss and picks up her robe. Disappointed, she steps forward, but he drapes it around her. “Perhaps later,” he says, trying to smile. “The dispatches…”   
  
“Of course,” she says. “And do read my report.”

They do not sleep apart, though each has their own rooms where they entertain other guests. Solas hurries to his private quarters, uneasy in his marble halls. The house is too quiet. Where are his young scholars, his petitioners, his angry priests? He was expecting, at the very least, a dinner party, perhaps with Imshael and Geldauron in attendance. In his office his in-tray is already filled. He groans. Mythal’s business never ends. He slides into his chair and begins sorting his mail. His staff would have already prioritized what must be answered today, but he prefers to pick the order in which he writes. He sets aside a letter from Falon’Din, complaining about a group of partying swineherds, to be answered last. His swineherds may party on, and encroach on whomever’s borders as they like, as long as they keep their brawling to a minimum. He makes a mental note to send Felassan that way, to make sure this does not escalate.   
  
At the very bottom of the pile is a curious little letter, written on fishskin. Solas wrinkles his nose at the smell. Carefully he tugs the almost translucent paper from its scaled envelope. The words are inscribed with Veilfire. The message is short, written in bold block letters:   
  
HAIL THE EXALTED ONE   
THE WILL THEY CALL PRIDE   
MYTHAL’S OWN, THE DREAD WOLF   
WE CRY YOU MERCY   
MERCY MERCY MERCY   
WE REPENT   
MERCY   
  
Solas places the letter on his desk and sighs. He closes his eyes, palm flat over the words, and enters the Fade. The room melts into the Waking World, Veilfire bringing him into the message, and in the Dreaming he floats in an underwater chamber, gorgeously ornamented in gold and green glass. They show Ghilan’nain taking tribute, which is her right. Solas glances around him and sees that he is flanked suddenly by whispers, elves with their faces splitting raw with scales, throats bleeding as gills emerge, and their vallaslin ripping suddenly from their bodies in as they erupt, screaming muted in the underwater temple, and horrified Solas opens his eyes to his simple office with the words in his ears: “Mercy. Mercy. Mercy.”   
  
“Those were her people,” Solas says aloud. “I knew she was taking volunteers, but I didn’t know--the vallaslin was  _ ripped _ from the body in their transformation, how can anyone survive that without aid? How many died? How many died after the experiment was deemed a success?”   
  
He waits until she is sleeping to investigate. The report lies heavily on his mind. One thousand elves, given willing sacrifice: only seven hundred have survived, and they have changed. They are creatures of mottled flesh and ripping pain, minds shattered by blood-bond Ghilan’nain pulled apart. She treats skeins of flesh like yarn that she can knit--but her subjects feel. His staff has kept track of how many have survived since the vallaslin was removed: only fifty-five percent. Of one thousand loyal attendants, seeking their freedom, only three hundred and eighty-five have survived. The kill rate is equal to Falon’Din in one of his worshipful moods. Solas is seething. She promised him they would do better. He would not have bound his heart to hers, if he knew she would end like this.   
  
He changes his clothes to a more simple homespun, and leaves off the wolfskin. He has been a servant and is still a slave to Mythal, whatever his manumission papers say. He can still pass as one today. He walks through his staffers’ paths through the wing he calls his own towards Ghilan’nain’s private laboratory. He is realizing why Mythal encouraged the match, and how both he and Andruil can find something compelling. Ghilan’nain has always been chilling. He mistook the shivering for passion, not frozen sadism. They both would do anything for their freedom, he has always known that--but this beggars belief, this crosses beyond what he thought possible.   
  
He presses a hand to her office door, and it swings open. She trusts him, and has left it unlocked. He has never done that for his wing of the house. Slightly ashamed, he wonders how she could have so misunderstood him. Then he remembers: six hundred and fifteen dead. Solas groans aloud, then slaps a hand over his own mouth. Mercy, mercy, he thinks: I repent.   
  
Her space is as clean and shining as possible. She has a sketch of her first halla that he made her framed on her desk. Solas resists the urge to take it. Above her desk, she has a set of antlers mounted on the wall. Andruil must have hunted it for her. It must be her fault, she was so reckless, Andruil must have egged her on: no. Solas waves the thought away. Whatever Ghilan’nain has does, it is her choice and hers alone. Andruil has never been capable of this calculating cruelty. Ghilan’nain chose to press ahead with the trials, even as her people began to mutate. Solas thinks again: thirty-eight point five percent. He says it aloud, to make it real.   
  
The glowstones activate at the sound of his voice. Lyrium is so responsive, especially to those who walk the Fade like he does. He walks away from her desk and begins examining the tanks that line the walls. Most of the creatures are asleep. Some of their faces are burnt blank. Solas’ heart sinks. These were people, once. These were Ghilan’nain’s people, so his people too. The vallaslin must be removed, but not at a cost such as this. He investigates, growing more and more disgusted. One creature is still recognizably elvhen, but bowed by massive horns erupting at odd angles from its face. Another has half its body melting into a dragon’s tail, but speckled with sores angry with inflammation. Solas stares at it, removed from itself. He wonders how it removes waste. He notices its hands are bound. Scales litter the bottom of the tank. He moves on.   
  
Hidden in a recess at the back of the room, furthest from the door, is a small pool, stinking of brine. The room grows hotter as he approaches it, and he hears strange whispers, the same from that odd diadem Ghilan’nain wears. Again, they feel familiar, but even if they are imbued with Veilfire, it is not the same kind that the petitioners wrote into the letter that brought him here. He casts his mind back, trying to place the odd sense of familiarity. The whispers have a sense of sluggish rhythm, and he finds himself moving in time towards the pool. It glows red rather than green, so it cannot be Fade magic, though he knows color signifiers are arbitrary, and Ghilan’nain’s senses are different from hers, ground by her blood magic. She would not be able to hear the whispers. They come at him through the Fade.   
  
Solas crouches by the pool. His hand reaches out to touch the water and he stops himself. Shaken slightly, he takes a step back. Grounding himself firmly, he closes his eyes and listens.   
  
“ We are here, we have waited,” the red waters whisper. “We have slept, we are sundered. We are crippled, we are polluted. We endure. We wait. We have found the dreams again.  _ We will awaken _ \--”   
  
Solas rips himself away, foot hovering above the pool. He scrambles, stumbling over himself, clattering to the ground, but mercifully on dry ground. He knows those evil whispers, he knows that red glow. It is the corruption in the Titan’s blood that festered when he and Mythal dealt it a mortal wound. It is a pollution he thought he had culled. It is a poison he broke from Mythal to cure. The Children of the Stone with whom he has drawn peace terms call it a blight. Ghilan’nain has cultivated it in their own home.   
  
Rage grips him and he surrenders to it. Dead whispers poison the air he breathes, the pollution is in his lungs now, synthesizing in his bloodstream, and red he storms calling fury electric down the halls of his silent home. The door to their bedroom swings open before he even shapes the ask in the Fade. Ghilan’nain is sitting before a mirror, combing her long hair. She turns, and for a moment they simply stare at each other.   
  
Finally, Ghilan’nain breaks the silence. “I take it you read the report,” she says.   
  
Solas throws the papers at her feet.   
  
“Ah,” she says. “I should have anticipated you would react that way. Did you make it to the conclusion, at least?”   
  
“The lyrium,” he says. “The pollution I found in the Deep Roads. That was not to be used. It was supposed to remain forgotten!”   
  
Ghilan’nain twists her mouth. “Is this what this is about? Really? You are angry because I explored and  _ expanded _ our options--the corrupted lyrium broke the geass of the vallaslin, Solas.”   
  
“And how many died for you to find that?” Solas snarls. “I saw the corpses, Ghilan’nain. They were our people! They came to us for aid! They volunteered only because they trusted that we would  _ make it worth it _ , and now--” His voice breaks. “We are no better than Sylaise in her vanity. Or Falon’Din.”   
  
“Perish the thought,” she says mildly. “Surely I’m no worse than Mythal--she has asked the same of her people, and more.”   
  
He is disgusted, and he is disgusted with himself, because he has thrown his lot with her. He was to petition Mythal formally to raise Ghilan’nain to Evanuris--and she deserves it. She is just like the lot of them, happy to drown in blood. “No,” he says. “No. No. You are worse. Mythal has asked too much of me, that is true. But she has never let her people die in vain. She has spared us what agony she could. And even when she has been cruel, she--” He stops. “This is no justice, Ghilan’nain. You are  _ nothing _ like Mythal.”   
  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Solas,” she says exasperated. “You want your freedom--I found it. And I did not even use up the whole stock. I was merciful. And for the dead?” She shrugs. “Well, they died for a good cause--your cause. Their sacrifice must be nobly borne. No more of these histrionics, my love. You have been too long away in war. You are home now, and we are so close to unravelling the bindings. I can break the geass, but you can hear what the lyrium says. Together we can--”   
  
“Shut up,” Solas growls. “Shut  _ up _ .” Ghilan’nain’s face sharpens, and he sees her reaching for her staff. He throws his arm out, reaching into the Fade to shove her away. The force of the blast shatters the mirror of her vanity, and quickly he throws up a barrier. Ghilan’nain screams, her face dripping with blood. The glass has cut into her eyes.   
  
“I can’t see,” she sobs. “Mythal’enaste, I can’t see. You bastard, you fucking son-of-a-wolf, I can’t see!” Her voice rises to a wail. “Solas! Help me! My love, help me!”   
  
Solas hurriedly picks up the papers he had scattered so carelessly on the ground. Stepping around the shattered mirror, Solas leaves. Ghilan’nain weeps blood and mucus behind him. He hears her calling behind him: “Andruil, avenge me.”


End file.
